Marks Don't Lie
by Ravshka
Summary: Soulmates have long since gotten tattoos when they turn 18, but Jean Kirstein has always had his.
1. The Painter

Squish. Jean lifts his hand from his table, where he had been diligently painting for a good three hours now. Sadly his focus bad been broken by a waste of paint. He blinks tawny eyes slowly, then moves his hand to the canvas, applying the dark green to the background with an added texture that sends a lulling satisfaction through his color drowned mind. He pulls his hand back from the painting to see the boy he had been depicting for years. Warm brown eyes, thick brown hair. His features are soft, and almost plain. What takes this boy beyond is his large amount of freckles. Freckles that more often than not spread a scowl over Jean's face while he painted them.

Jean leaned back in his chair, straightening his spine with a series of pops and a grimace. He looks down at his paint splotched shirt and sighs to himself. He stands and walks to his bathroom, pulling off his shirt as he goes. Dumping his clothes in his dirty clothes hamper, he steps into the shower and jumps at the icy stream. Lathering his hair with shampoo as the water warms, the dark ink on his forearm catches his attention. Since birth, he'd had the word "Marco" tattooed onto his skin. His mother was alarmed, insisting that soulmate tattoos didn't show up until the child was eighteen. Normally, that's how they worked. When a person turns eighteen their soulmate tattoo appeared. Sometimes it was the first words said to them, other times it was a drawing representing their soulmate. Jean had even heard of some with a fingerprint on their bodies, fingerprints that didn't belong to them. His friend of sorts, Eren Jaeger, had a particularly hard time with his tattoo, as he was born with the word "Heishicho" on his shoulder. Eren managed to find his soulmate when a short man with ink black hair caught him taking flowers from his garden. One short date to the cemetery later, the man, Levi Ackerman, had met Eren's mother.

Jean runs his hand over the name, his fingertips tracing the looping handwriting, as familiar as his own sloppy scrawl. Rinsing off, he steps out of the shower, fingers grasping for his towel. Drying off with the rough cloth, he pads to his bedroom. The room is bland, lacking the fiery personality that his friends had come to expect. He rolls over to stare at the one piece of decoration, finding it hard to swallow through the lump of emotion in his throat. Tanned arms wrap around his stomach as he gulps back tears, looking at the face he always paints. The face from his dreams, his past life. The face of the person who tagged Jean with his very existence. The face that had not been reborn into this life. The face that had left Jean alone for centuries.

Jean rolls back over to look at a blank wall, the emptiness inside him consuming him as he falls asleep, dreaming of the boy with the freckles and the smile that lights up the world.


	2. The Other Half

Marco walks down the stairs of his small apartment complex, brown jacket buttoned up under his chin and a bright red hat pulled over his brown hair and freckled ears, half his face darkened by a birthmark. His hand tightens over the strap of his messenger bag as he walks to the bus stop and prepares to wait. Hidden by his shirt and jacket was the small name "Jean" scrawled over the right side of his ribcage. Just knowing it's there is a small comfort, since in his first life he had died before it was able to show up. His chest aches as he imagines the pain that must have happened for Jean to have gotten the mark after Marco had died.

It was only his second life after he had been killed by titans when he had tried his best to not actively seek out his tawny-eyed soulmate, believing it best to let life happen as it would, but that proved fruitless, as he died alone and scared. A heart attack had snuffed his breath at age 49 as he was closing up his bookstore.

Releasing the death grip on his poor bag, Marco walks down the three blocks to the bus stop that takes him to his job at the local art supply store. It's a small job, doesn't pay a fortune, but Marco likes it well enough. He's only trying to save up for college, so he can't be too picky. Besides, he likes it there. It's a welcoming atmosphere, and his coworkers are quiet, competent, and efficient.

He pulls his headphones out of his pocket and frowns at the mess they've become. Skillful hands fumble in the cold, his breath clouding his vision just enough to be a problem.

"Need some help?" a quiet voice peeps up from behind his shoulder.

Marco glances up from the tangled mess in his hands with a thankful smile, looking over to the young man next to him. "Yeah, if you don't mind. Thank you!" His voice is chipper and the man glances up sharply from the headphones to his speckled face. His tawny eyes are wide in shock, soft, light brown hair flicking over tanned skin. The voice that comes is hoarse.

"Marco? Is that you?"


End file.
